Unlocking iPhone from AT&T gets easier, still a pain

So you say writing SIMs all by your lonesome isn’t part of your daily routine, but you’re still interested in freeing the iPhone from AT&T’s surly bonds? Yeah, we can’t blame you — we’re pretty much in the same boat — so we’re glad to see that an ever-so-slightly easier unlocking trick has bubbled out of the hive mind just a week after the original. This new hackery involves a specialized SIM card called a “Turbo SIM” manufactured by the Czech Republic’s BLADOX. The idea behind the Turbo SIM is that you can add… well, stuff to the Turbo SIM, sandwich it between your regular SIM and your phone, and the loaded material then becomes available to the handset; traditionally, that “stuff” is value-add software like customized SMS directories, security, logging, and the like. In this case, though, the chip is used to pass through the original AT&T SIM’s identifying information to the phone while preserving the calling capability of the Carrier X SIM of your choosing. Of course, a €59 (about $81) Turbo SIM has to be ordered from afar to get this accomplished, the phone has to be jailbreaked, and a handful of files need to be downloaded, edited, and executed, so this still isn’t for the faint of heart. As always, buyer beware, and find a nice stack of paper that needs weightin’ in case everything goes south in a hurry.